A Conspiracy Of Minerals
by Dragon Elexus
Summary: A strange, out of the way town. Supernatural beings. Hidden plots. And plucky children, destined to save the world...Wait, which show are we talking about again? (A series of crossover one-shots between Gravity Falls and Steven Universe).
1. Fool's Gold

**Fool's Gold**

Stan Pines was sitting in his usual position at the till of the Mystery Shack gift shop, going through inventory and ordering extra 'one of a kind' merchandise, when he heard it.

The sound of money.

Others wouldn't have recognized it- and not just because the telltale noise was muffled as it drifted through the walls of the shack. They would have misinterpreted it. But Stan viewed things in a way that others didn't, and he knew that in this business, a squabbling family equalled money. You just had to know how to play 'em.

Quick as could be, he pulled on his eye patch, grabbed his cane, and headed out the door, ready to pacify the latest family of tourists with the promise of excitement and mystery.

"This is ridiculous," one was complaining as the group made its way in his direction. She was an odd sort- tall, long nosed, dressed real fancy, hair dyed pink. Or maybe orange; one of the two. (Stan didn't hold with all these fancy new colours like 'salmon' or 'peach'.) "A source of power this strong isn't just going to be sitting out in the open! Investigating this tiny human town is just a waste of time!"

"Beach City is a tiny human town," pointed out the young boy accompanying her. He seemed to be the most normal of the bunch. Short, chubby, curly black hair. Looked to be about Dipper and Mabel's age.

"That's completely different!" the woman protested.

"It doesn't matter," said a second lady. She towered over the rest of the group, an effect enhanced by her strange suit and huge reflective sunglasses. She had somehow managed to shape her hair into a near-perfect cube. "It's here. I can feel it."

At that moment, a third woman broke in (although, maybe she wasn't a woman at all, but just a teenager). She had purple skin, which was weird, but Stan had seen weirder. "Yeah, P. Besides, I think this place looks kinda cool."

That was Stan's queue.

"Oh, it is cool, I assure you," he said with a voice like snake-oil, slipping into the conversation. He twirled his cane to add a bit of flourish. "If it's power you're looking for, then you've come to the right place! The Mystery Shack is a collection of both horrors and wonders, housing magical artifacts far beyond human comprehension." He paused. "Entry is ten dollars each."

The boy gestured at him, looking towards his family(?) with a satisfied expression. "See?"

The pink/orange-haired one looked from the boy, to Stan, to the shack behind him. "No," she said.

As far as Stan was concerned, anybody with some sort of shiny jewel embedded in their forehead had no right to look as skeptical as she did. But then, she didn't matter. She clearly wasn't the one he'd have to work on.

"Don't worry," he instead told the boy with an award-winning smile. "She will. And that's a Mystery Shack guarantee!"

The boy smiled back at him, then at his family. All of them then looked towards the tall, square-headed one. After a moment, she shrugged. Without a word, she began walking towards the tourist trap. The rest followed her with varying levels of enthusiasm.

Stan beamed. "Excellent choice! And you know what? Since I like you folks, I'll even make it a private tour, just for you!"

(Silently, Stan added another six bucks to the tour's cost. Per person. It was the perfect way to turn a slow day around. Now he just wished he hadn't let all the kids have the day off. He could use their help.)

He shepherded the group in- or at least, 'shepherded' was the term he usually used. There wasn't anything particularly sheep like about thesepeople. They moved quickly and efficiently, striding right into the building without a second look in his direction. Stan began with his usual spiel, but he could tell that it was being ignored. Stan prided himself on his improvisational skills, able to adapt easily to any lemmings' interests, but in this case, it didn't seem seem to be working. The square one had been staring at the cast of some "monster's footprint" that he'd had Soos whip up five years back, but when Stan shared his usual tales about the mysterious creatures living in the woods, she was completely unfazed- but then, who could tell with her wearing those giant sunglasses? He caught the one with the nose inspecting a set of old arrow heads, but at his well-worn story about a haunted Indian burial ground, she just scoffed. The purple one listened with rapt interest as he explained about the 'brave hunter' who managed to catch and mount an alien (said alien made through a creative stitching together of taxidermy duck, a couple discount Summerween costumes and the generous application of glitter), but then she just laughed and said, "This guy's a riot!"

The only one who seems the least bit interested in him was the kid. About five attractions into the Shack he held a hand out to Stan and said, "My name's Steven Universe, by the way. What's yours?"

Stan regarded the out-stretched hand for a moment, then took it. "Stan Pines."

The boy nodded, grinned. "How'd you lose your eye?"

"Yeti attack," Stan lied, without hesitation. The boy nodded again. He didn't seem particularly surprised or amazed by this statement, just accepted it as fact.

Honestly, there was something odd about the kid. Stan wasn't sure what to make of him. Sure, he seemed like the usual gullible child who ended up dragging their whole family to every roadside attraction they passed, but Stan's gut said there was more to him than that. There had to be, for somebody so apparently-normal to be hanging out with weirdos like these. He seemed to have the same unfaltering cheerfulness of Mabel, albeit more subdued. The kind of person who, underneath the smiles and sequins, had an iron will.

If there was one thing Stan had learned in the past few months, it was not to underestimate Mabel Pines, and he suspected the same thing held true of Steven Universe.

But San still did his best to entertain him, feed him the usual stories, keep him happy. It seemed to work, too.

At least, until the pink-haired one came over.

"Pearl, Pearl!" the boy said, almost buzzing with excitement. "Is it true that mammoths breathed fire?"

"No. They did not," she said, frankly. She put an arm on Steven's shoulder, and subtly but firmly pulled him away from Stan. She was looking at the man as though he was something strange and disgusting she'd found on the bottom of her shoe. Stan would have been offended, but honestly, he was used to it. "Listen," this Pearl lady said. "Do you have anything here that is actually magical?"

Part of Stan recognized that what he was about to say was probably a bad idea, but old habits die hard, and he couldn't help it. "I guarantee, madame, that everything here is a 100% genuine magical artifact!"

Big Nose looked like she might explode. Or, at the very least, walk-out without saying another word. But before either of those things could happen, Purple popped up and said, "Look, have you got any rocks?"

That, Stan did have.

"TADA!" he said, several minutes later, with a flourish of jazz hands. "The rock that looks like a face rock!"

The assembled visitors stared at the relevant rock.

"...So it's a rock," began the Square One, speaking slowly, as though to unravel some hidden truths, "that looks like a face."

"Exactly," said Stan. When there was no further reaction, he added, "Pretty cool, right?"

"So it's...merely a rock which, due to random chance, superficially resembles a human face?" asked Pearl, who appeared to have reached a stage of pure confused resignation.

"Er. Yes."

"Well," Steven said. "I think it's pretty cool."

"Yeah," Purple said. "But it's not a gem, soooo..."

"Oh, you're looking for gems?" asked Stan. "We've got those!"

Well, in a sense. He definitely had some genuine gemstones. He also had some very gemstone looking things . False stones made of plastic. Pieces of glass found by the lake. Marbles. Ring pops. Stan displayed them all at the same exhibit, tucked away in the back of the Mystery Shack, where few tourists managed to reach.

The four visitors were not particularly impressed.

"They're very...uh, sparkly," Steven said loyally.

"Is that one candy?" snickered Purple. Stan ignored her.

Big Nose's face was buried in her hands. Peeking through, she turned the the tallest one and said, "Can we please leave now?"

It seemed as tough Square Head was going to agree, but before she could open her mouth, one of the stones began to glow.

"See?" said Stan. "Magic!"

He wasn't a **total** liar, after all. Like the rest of the Gravity Falls, there was something genuine among the junk. Some of the gems in his collectionwere real- though, admittedly, not particularly valuable, being too small and low quality to really be worth anything. And among those, there was something truly special; a stone of brilliant orange with deep veins of black running through it, embedded in a piece of elegantly carved oak, beautiful to behold.

Stan didn't particularly care for it. He'd gotten it at a bargain from a wandering magician. The reasons for the low price quickly became apparent, and Stan had been forced to put the gemstone on display somewhere that couldn't disrupt anything else. It would be fine if the gem just occasionally lit up; a light show never hurt anyone, would have even added a bit of pizzazz. What wasn't fine was that whenever it did so, random objects would begin to levitate and get thrown around the room, as if the stone was a child having a monstrous tantrum.

This is what it began doing then. It grabbed Stan's fez, which shimmered in a pale orange light, before tossing it violently at the ceiling. At the same time, it also grabbed a broom Soos had left propped in a corner, and a few creepy china dolls that the Shack had lying around.

The four visitors immediately tensed up, ready to fight. Random parts of their body began to glow- forehead, chest, hands. "Relax," Stan assured them. "Just a bit of your classic telekinesis. Harmless stuff."

As if to smite him, the gemstone decided to pick up the Purple one, who had somehow managed pull a whip out of her chest, and flung her into a wall. She hit with a sickening crash, sending down a shower of dust from the rafters.

"Amethyst!" Steven cried.

"Oh, you wanna play?" the girl growled, picking herself off the ground and charging at the display, whip in hand. The magical force began to throw the china dolls at her; she dodged the first two, but the last one hit her on the head, shattering, but apparently leaving her unharmed. Stan couldn't say that he was particularly upset about the dolls' destruction. They had been pretty creepy.

Predictably, the girl's attack was not successful, since the angry gemstone merely picked her up once more- while also grabbing two of her friends, who'd at some point summoned a spear and pair of giant gauntlets. This time, it didn't just fling them at the nearest wall, but kept them suspended in the air, where they struggled uselessly.

"You've upset it!" the boy cried, staring up at his companions.

"Yo, **it** attacked first!" Amethyst responded, as the gemstone grabbed the broom, a bucket, pieces of broken china, and started tearing up the floorboards. Stan winced. That would be expensive to repair.

They were both right, really. The gem had a hair-trigger temper, and there was no way to avoid these outbursts in the first place. However, Mystery Shack employees had learned from experience that any attempts to engage it just made that anger worst; the best method of dealing with the sentient stone was retreating, and coming back once it had calmed down. With three of his visitors suspended in the air, however, that wasn't going to be an option (however tempting it may be).

The gem threw the inanimate objects it was holding in every direction. A shower of doll shrapnel went heading right for the boy; a sudden pink shield appeared on his arm, deflecting them. Stan had so such tricks. Using an agility surprising for his age, he dodged a couple of pieces of the ex-dolls, and side-stepped the broom coming right at him, then plucked it right out of the air by the handle.

"Are you okay, Steven?" Pearl wailed.

"I'm fine!" he shouted back, over the roar of floorboards being torn out of the very ground.

Keep talking, keep talking, Stan thought, as he 'nonchalantly' made his way towards the gemstone display, broom hidden behind his back. The boy saw him; they shared a look, and understanding passed between them. Steven looked away, and somehow continued to find something to talk about, leaving his friends- and more importantly, the sentient stone- distracted. This gave Stan the opportunity to quickly whip out the broom, and use it's handle to knock the orange gem off it's perch. It fell; and as it did, it lost it's telepathic grip, and everything it had been holding fell too. At that moment Steven leapt forward and slid across the floor, managing to catch the stone right before it hit the ground and shattered.

"Woah. Shhh. Shhhh," the boy crooned to the orange stone in his open palms. "Just relax, now, okay? Everything's going to be alright.

"This kind of thing wouldn't happen as often if you guys tried being a little nicer," he gently admonished his friends, as he began to pry the gemstone out of the wood.

"Maybe you're right, Steven," the tall one said, but the other two looked dubious. Stan shared their concern. Maybe sometimes the nice approach worked, but more often than not it would just get you killed, especially if you didn't have any fancy shield powers.

The ability to create magical shields apparently wasn't the only power this kid had. The moment he'd worked the gemstone free of the wood, a small, pink sphere blossomed in his hand, surrounding the now floating jewel.

"Hey, wait, you can't just-" Stan began.

The bubble vanished, the gem with it.

The man sighed. Clearly, they could. And maybe it was for the best. One less thing for him to worry about, anyway.

"You're gonna have to pay for that," he still told them gruffly. "And for the tour. A hundred bucks."

Big Nose and Purple looked like they might just argue about that, but then Steven pointed out that 'it's wrong to steal things', and Square just nodded at Stan and said, "Very well."

Amethyst huffed, crossing her arms. "What's with humans and their money obsession, anyway...?"

"I don't even have any money on me!" muttered Pearl. Neither did the others, though the boy did have seventy-five cents in one of his pockets. Eventually, Big Nose just sighed; the shiny oval at her forehead began to glow with a bright, pure light, and from it materialized a pile of gold.

"Here. Take this. We're going." Pearl handed the summoned payment straight into the hands of the unresisting, but sceptical, Stan. The gold came in many forms- old coins, rings, chains, even a crown. As the four guests left the way they came in, he bit into one of the coins. It felt soft but solid against his teeth.

Bah. That was the problem with supernatural beings. They never knew how to use credit cards.

Oh well- at least they'd still paid. In gold. And the real stuff, too, not any of that Leprechaun fakery. Despite the disaster, there would still be enough here to make a decent profit.

Yeah. All in all, it had been a good day.

oOoOo

 **Author's Note:** Ever since we found out that we're getting new SU and GF episodes on the same day, I figured I needed to do something to help celebrate...and I figured that it was the perfect excuse to get out the crossover fic stewing at the back of my head. Or fics, rather, since I was imagining a bunch of random scenes, but no way to link them into a coherent signal plot. Hopefully, they're still enjoyable.


	2. A Professional Interest

**A Professional Interest**

 **Summary:** There's apparently a new Dream Demon in the multi-verse, and Bill Cipher is going to track him down.

oOoOoOo

On the inter-dimensional grape-vine news travels quickly, passing from mouth to mouth. Metaphorically, at least. On that plane of existence very few beings actually _have_ mouths, except for aesthetic purposes, and of course time is merely an illusion constructed by linear beings, so 'quickly' is an inherently flawed concept.

But nonetheless, news travels, and eventually it reaches Bill Cipher.

And the news is this: _apparently_ , there's a new Dream Demon on the block.

He _knows_ that everyone's watching him, gauging his reaction, looking for the smallest sign of weakness. It's what he'd do if the situation was reversed. Bill plays it cool, and plays it down. He tells them all that this is all probably just some misunderstanding, a bit of exaggeration. It's probably just some dime-a-dozen mortal 'Chosen One' with dream-based prophecies getting blown out of proportion. And if there _is_ another genuine dream walker out there- so what? He doesn't care; he's busy with his own stuff right now, and there's plenty of room in the multiverse. Fact, he would be _happy_ for someone actually _interesting_ to talk to for once, maybe for a bit of friendly competition.

That particular comment earns a great deal of laughter (or at least, something vaguely _like_ laughter), because everyone knows that while Bill Cipher may relish the occasional competition, there's never anything _friendly_ about it.

Bill laughs along with them- he enjoys a good laugh. And when they've all finally lost interest, drifted off and returned to their own schemes, Bill vanishes too.

He travels through the mindscape. Not any single individual's mindscape, but the _trans-universal_ one; the dimension shaped by the subconscious of every single mortal being that has ever lived or ever will. The place is vast and beyond comprehension, but the demon is in his element. He lets the waves of thought stream around his form, feels the currents, tugging and pulling and whirling- and then he senses it, a distortion, a clear sign of meddling. Merely a raindrop in an ocean, but still noticeable. He moves towards the disturbance, then dives in.

Only once he's inside the affected mind does he understand how appropriate his ocean analogy was. This particular mindscape is like a deep, endless ocean, twisted and turbulent, greens and blues and whites warping through infinity. It's dizzying. Bill merely finds the maelstrom exhilarating.

The waters of the mind begin to shift and part, and from all around a voice booms. " _What are you doing here_?! We told you to LEA-"

The voice dies mid-sentence. The four eyes and the face and body which has materialized out of the gloom freezes, stares.

When a fusion stabilizes, solidifies, becomes a being in their own right, there's only a handful of things which can threaten that stability. Willing defusion. Destruction of the projected body. Extreme pain, either physical and emotional. Utterly incompatible emotions from the component parts.

Shock.

And Malachite was _very_ shocked to find an all-seeing triangle eyes in her mind.

The four eyes widen in surprise, and she bares her fangs. But the shock has already broken the cohesion, and her mental-self begins to dissolve, vanishing underneath the giant mane of hair. The green ocean fills with clashing blues and oranges. Understanding dawns on Bill. This isn't just the mind of a Gem, but Gems _plural_.

Bill knows about Gems. Of _course_ he does. It's just that they've never interested him much. They're a slow, uncreative, cookie-cutter species. They're dull. They spend their time following orders. They don't sleep. They don't dream.

Or so he thought.

Because fusion...well, isn't fusion, in a sense, just dreaming? Giving your conscious up to something other than yourself, something _greater_?

Before him now, where a single being had stood, there are instead two. They both appear to be washed out in green, but Bill can feel their true colours beneath. They are standing back-to-back, bound together by chains of water. The larger one struggles, but cannot break free. Both their heads turn to look at him, more in unison than either of them realizes.

"HEYA," Bill Cipher greets.

"You're not-" begins the smaller one. Lapis Lazuli, Bill knows. She shakes her head, fixes him with a glare. "What are you doing here? Who are you?"

" _What_ are you?" growls the big one next to her. Jasper.

The Dream Demon floats casually floats towards her. "NEVER YOU MIND," Bill says, with a dismissive wave of a hand. "I JUST HAPPENED TO BE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD, AND I WAS HOPING YOU DAMES MIGHT BE ABLE TO HELP ME OUT WITH SOMETHING."

The Gems stare. "No," they both say.

Cipher settles back lazily. "OH, COME NOW. I DON'T WANT MUCH. JUST SOME INFORMATION. I'LL EVEN GIVE YOU SOMETHING IN RETURN. HOW ABOUT SOMEONE TO KEEP YOU COMPANY DOWN HERE?"

He snaps his fingers. One of his pet disembodied heads appears, thrashing desperately, eyes rolling, voice raw from continuous screaming..

The head doesn't get much of a reaction from them. He snaps his fingers again, and replaces the head with a screaming stone, figuring that _this_ , at least, might be more their speed. Still, they just stare, seeming more confused than anything. That's the problem with Gems. They're just so _boring_.

"LOOK," Bill says, sending the pathetic pebble back to it's eternal torment. "SOMEBODY WAS HERE RECENTLY. BESIDES YOU TWO, I MEAN. I WANT TO KNOW _WHO_."

Lapis flinches. He's his a nerve (metaphorically. Gems don't have nerves. Again, boring). Maybe he won't have to go ruffling through Malachite's memories after all. "Why do you want to know?" she demands.

"OH, I JUST WANT TO CHAT. CALL IT A... PROFESSIONAL INTEREST."

The two Gems' feet sink deeper into the water as Lapis prepares to hold their 'ground'. But Jasper struggles, and opens her mouth, as if there's something to say, but she can't quite remember how to do so.

Bill savours her mind. It's been cracked, shattered, pushed beyond it's limits and now filled with nothing but endless rage and confusion. It's a work of art.

He can make use of it.

"COME ON," he purrs, like a hungry lion into a megaphone. "I JUST NEED A NAME. THAT'S IT."

"No- don't tell him-" Lapis shouts, but Jasper is fighting in earnest now, and it seems that at just point, she just wants to spite her captor. It's all the blue alien can do to keep them bound together.

"Rose Quartz," Jasper finally manages to bark out, her voice hoarse.

Bill Cipher's eye narrows.

Images stream through the triangle- or perhaps, he streams through the images. _A vast empire, stretching across the cosmos. A tiny blue planet, infested with pathetic, short-lived creatures. A terrible empathy. A shield, a sword, a flag, all raised in battle. Twining vines erupting from the earth, sharp thorns digging into enemies' flesh, dragging them to the ground. Shattering, shattering, shattering. Grief. Weeping, and pink tears which can only heal so much. Endless experiments, tinkering, research. Dances on a moonlit beach..._

Bill Cipher pulls himself away. He's seen enough.

Rose Quartz? A _Dream Demon_? No, she couldn't be. She doesn't have the _soul_ for it. She's truly like a stone, immense and immovable.

Still, Bill can feel that there's _something_ to the claim. Not truth, because truth is relative and meaningless, but _something_. He's just needs one last piece to the puzzle, and the picture will become clear.

"Not Rose Quartz," hisses Lapis Lazuli, snapping at the prisoner she's chained to her back. "He's not Rose Quartz. Why can't you **understand** that?"

"That was the Rose Quartz Gem!" Jasper snarls, and there's an air of smugness to her anger.

"But he's _different_!" Lapis insists. The chains grow tighter. Jasper winces, faltering.

Different? In what way? Bill is intrigued. A Gem is a gem, he thought. But could a Gem also, somehow, be something different?

"WHAT EXACTLY DO YOU MEAN?"

"I'm not going to tell you," Lapis says.

"AWW, WHY NOT? IS IT BECAUSE I'M A TRIANGLE? BECAUSE THAT'S SHAPIST, MISS TEAR-DROP."

"...what?" say the two Gems together, in Malachite's voice.

That was Gems for you. Just as prejudiced as everybody else, but without the ability to even recognize it.

"JUST TELL ME," Bill orders. They're testing his patience.

Lapis curls her hand into a fist. "No."

"VERY WELL."

The pyramid flares a bright piercing red, suddenly wreathed in flames, grows monstrous in size. The water around him sizzles and boils. He raises his hands, and the water grows even more turbulent- now it's a whirlpool, a typhoon, a _tsunami_.

This might be their mind, but it's _Bill's_ domain.

In the shifting currents images form. Over the roar of the waves, other sounds can be heard- chatter, screams, singing, spaceship engines, the whine of static. In the here-and-now, the Gems scream as their memories are laid bare.

Cipher scans those memories hungrily. Most he ignores; they are of no interest to him. What does he care of Gem politics, of pointless wars fought thousands of years ago in this backwater dimension?

Finally, though, he catches sight of a recurring image...very recent, it seems, appearing surprisingly often. Surprisingly often, considering it's nature, but yet it's clearly something important to Jasper and Lapis Lazuli.

Or some _one_ , to be more accurate. It's a human boy, soft and doughy. Here's his face, very close, curious and happy...Now he's on a beach, bathed in unearthly green, cowering behind others...Standing upon a platform of blue, surrounded by endless stars...Falling to the ground in exhaustion, the pink light from his belly fading...Giggling happily as he lies on a beach...His unconscious body being thrown unceremoniously into a cell...Him reaching out to them, shouting, as they vanish beneath the waves...

"WHO'S _THIS_?" Cipher demands. Even through the distorted veil of memories, he can **feel** the boy's powers.

Both Gems' faces are contorted in pain. Their bonds has forced them closer than ever; their consciousness is once more fading into a single being, their mental-forms literally melting together. Lapis's mouth is still her own, however, and it is clamped firmly shut. Jasper's is not, however, and she growls, " _Rose Quartz.._."

Interesting.

Bill dives deeper into their memories, feeling for the areas of most resistance, and pulls out a memory as fresh as they come.

There's the boy once more, fear in his eyes, desperately scrambling backwards as Jasper lunges at him. Unlike the other memories, this doesn't take place in the physical world, but the very mindscape they inhabit right now.

He moves on, to something a littleolder. There's nothing but fear, and pain, exhaustion- but then the boy appears, a sudden new presence, warm and comforting, but oh-so-distracting. Even as he smiles at her, and grips her by the arm, and says her name, Lapis can feel her grip slipping...but she needs to know, she's so confused...

So the Lapis of the memory speaks, as does her current consciousness: " _Steven_!"

And just like that, Bill has his name.

"THERE WE GO," he says, snapping back into his normal yellow self. He lets go of his grip on the Gems' recollections, but the sea doesn't settle. "THAT WASN'T SO HARD, WAS IT?"

In answer, the two Gems- practically one Gem, now- just snarl wordlessly at him. They try to lunge, to catch him, but their half-formed consciousness merely falls to the ground, too disjointed and uncoordinated to do anything. They have too many legs, too many eyes, too many thoughts. Bill isn't scared- he's just amused.

"WELL, LOOK, I'D _LOVE_ TO HANG AROUND, WATCH YOU FLAIL AROUND LIKE THIS," he says, "BUT I'M A BUSY GUY. THANKS FOR HAVING ME. HAVE A NICE LIFE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN, BUH-BYYYYYEEEE."

He vanishes, off to confront the new Dream Demon- one 'Steven Quartz Universe'.

In her own mind, Malachite crashes back into herself, and is left alone, with only her own inner demons to rage at.

oOoOoOo

Author's Note: Maybe eventually I'll write the scene after this- the 'friendly chat' between Steven and Bill- but for now I'll just leave it to my wonderful readers' imaginations.


	3. Friendly Faces

**Friendly Faces**

 **Summary:** After discovering a mysterious portal, Dipper's excited for the chance to explore an actual parallel universe, especially when he meets like-minded conspiracy theorist named Ronaldo. (Mabel, meanwhile, is wasting this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with a trip to the local beach).

oOoOoOo

"Don't you understand, Mabel?" Dipper hisses in a low-voice, gripping his sister by the arm. "We're in an alternate universe! The very laws of physics could be different here? Aren't you at all interested?"

"The laws of physics seem pretty much the same to me," the girl replies. To demonstrate, she picks up a fork sitting on the table; when she lets go, it falls back down, just like a fork would in her own universe (occasional gravitational anomalies not withstanding). It clatters loudly in the small restaurant- Dipper winces. "It's not that I'm not interested. It's just that I'm more interested in the beach."

The boy groans in exasperation. "We have a beach in Gravity Falls! You can go there literally anytime you like!"

"That's different."

"How?"

"Oh, you know. Ocean beaches are just fundamentally **better**. The waves, the salt, the hunky boys..."

Dipper rolls his eyes. He could point out that boy frequency is completely unrelated to beach type He could also remind his sister of her less-than-stellar dating record from over the past summer. But he's not that cruel, and honestly, he's kind of happy to hear that she's interested again. She'd gotten into kind of a funk.

"Okay, fine," he eventually relents. It's not his job to tell her what to do, even if he does totally think she's wasting her time. "Go swim at the beach or whatever! But remember, we're meeting at the portal in five hours!"

"I know, I know, don't worry!" she tells him. She heads out the restaurant door, beach towel slung over her shoulder, waving good-bye at him. "Have fun!"

"Yeah, you too!" Dipper says, not quite matching her enthusiasm. He turns his attention back to the remaining slice of pizza in front of him. He picks it up and chews it thoughtfully, wondering how to properly begin his investigation. Would it be a waste to start empirically testing laws of physics, or should he could searching for something more dramatic, like the many strange creatures that inhabit Gravity Falls? Where would he even start? There's no dark and mysterious woods here for strange creatures to lurk in.

He's decided to start searching the down systematically, and is drawing up a mental grid, when he feels somebody slide up besides him and say, "So...you're interested in the weird, huh?"

Dipper starts. He forces himself to calm down. The speaker turns out just to be a teenager, with curly blonde hair, glasses, and carrying a satchel covered in all sorts of geeky buttons. His eyebrows are raised conspiratorially. "Er," Dipper says, lowering his pizza. He and Mabel had both promised to play it close to the vest, and not tell anybody about their origins, just to be on the safe side. Didn't want to run into any secret governmental types or the like. "I guess you could say that."

The guy taps the side of his nose. "Want to keep it on the low, eh? Don't worry, I get it. That's why I waited until the civilian left to come talk to you."

"You mean my sister?"

"Yes, exactly! I have a brother just like her. I know how it is. Willfully ignorant, never interested in the true mysteries around them."

"Yeah," Dipper agrees with a sigh. Then he perks up. "Wait, are you saying you know about mysteries?"

The teen puffs out his chest with pride. "Yep! There's all sorts of mysteries around Beach City. I run a blog dedicated to documenting them: Keep Beach City Weird! Have you read it?"

"Sorry, no. I have...pretty limited Wi-Fi access," Dipper says, which isn't actually a lie. (The more truthful explanation being that, even with Wi-Fi, he doubts he could access any websites from another universe. Though, Gravity Falls being Gravity Falls, maybe it would be possible.) "But I'm still super interested! Would you mind giving me the low-down?"

"No prob!" The guy sticks out a hand. "Name's Ronaldo."

The boy takes it. "Dipper."

He's sure this is going to be the beginning of a beautiful partnership.

OooOoOo

The beach is a lot quieter than Mabel expected. A lot.

As in, 'completely empty'. Not just of boys, but people in general. There's a couple seagulls, but that's about it. There isn't even a life-guard (or life-guard tower, come to think of it. What sort of self-respecting beach doesn't have a Baywatch style life-guard tower?)

It's a little disappointing, but Mabel makes the best of it, throwing her towel and clothes onto the sand, before rushing out into the water. She splashes around there, enjoying the look of her sparkling pink bathing-suit, the warmth of the sun, the spray of the water, the taste of the salt. For a while, she pretends she's a mermaid. Not for that long, though, because then she starts thinking about Mermando, and can't help but feel a little melancholy. She wonders how he's doing, in that arranged marriage of his.

Eventually she starts swimming down the coast. It's an easy swim, since the water is shallow and there isn't much of a current. She wishes that she'd thought to bring snorkeling gear with her, because then she'd have a chance to look for coral reefs and sunken ships. Are there even reefs in this universe? There have to be. Coral reefs are **amazing** , and any universe lacking them just isn't worth bothering with, in her opinion.

What else is amazing? That statue.

The girl first notices it after she comes up for breath after a particularly long dive. She's swam to a completely different part of the beach by then- she must of, because there's no way she could have missed the figure before. The statue is huge, and it dominates the entire beach. It looks like some sort of ancient goddess, carved out of crumbling stone. Four sets of arms, most of them now destroyed, hair like a waterfall of flowers, two faces, one set staring across the sea, the other at the open sky above.

Mabel is seized by the sudden urge to climb it.

She was just clambering out of the water and running up the beach to get a closer look, when she hears somebody call out to her from above. "Hey!"

Mabel blinks around in confusion until she finds the source. It's a curly haired boy, waving down at her from one of the the giant statue's outstretched hands. He's kind of cute. "Hi!" she calls back.

"I've never seen you around here before!" he yells down. Between the distance and the sea wind, she can only just make out the words.

"I'm visiting!" she scream, as loudly as she can, in case he's having the same trouble. "My name's Mabel! How about you?!"

"Steven!"

"Did you climb all the way up there by yourself?!" Mabel asks, feeling deeply impressed by the feat. Also a little bit woozy. She's just remembered that she has a fear of heights.

It's hard to look sheepish while screaming from atop a giant statue, but Steven somehow manages it. "Er, no! Not exactly! Um, why don't you go up into my room," he yells, and points towards the tiny house up the hill, tucked into the statue's base, "and I can show you!"

"Okay!" Mabel says. The boy grins broadly at her, then ducks out of sight. A moment later, he drops a towel down so she can dry off. Mabel takes it, and is patting herself down when a bright beam of light shoots up from a hand. That's... a little weird, but hardly in the top hundred weirdest things she's seen. It just makes her curious, more than anything.

With a shrug, Mabel ties the towel around her neck and begins up the hill.

OooOoOo

Ronaldo leads Dipper to his base of operations, found at the very top of an old lighthouse. As far as bases of operation go, it's a good one. Very cool, very atmospheric. Dipper can't help but think of his shared attic room in the Mystery Shack and feel a little embarrassed/jealous.

He does his best squash those feelings, hide them. He's trying to be professional here.

The circular room is overflowing with charts, photographs, diagrams, news clippings, scrawled theories. It's beautiful and tantalizing and intriguing. Dipper stands in front of a white board with all sorts of paper scraps and scrawled marker, all connecting by actual string, just like he sometimes does. The young sleuth stares at it, trying to decode the meaning. What's the connection behind the diamond symbol on this world's currency, pictures of ancient ruins, and what looks to be a giant green hand?

"Oh, don't worry about that," Ronaldo says in a way that's supposed to be offhanded, but comes across just a little too stiff. "That's some of my...older work. Theoretically sound, but not worth pursuing at the moment. I've moved on to more interesting things."

"Er...okay," Dipper says, coming to rejoin the teenager who's begun rifling through a file cabinet. He's still kind of curious about the 'polymorphic sentient rock' theory, though. Does it refer to trolls, maybe?

Ronaldo finds what he's looking for, and holds up a file with pride. "If I show you this, you have to promise to keep it a secret. There are a lot of people who'd be unhappy if they knew that I know what I know, and there are eyes everywhere."

Dipper knows the feeling. Silently, he nods his head. Ronaldo can tell he's serious, and holds the folder out. "Very well. Several weeks ago I became aware of a sinister cover-up being perpetrated by the government, and I have begun to uncover exactly how they're keeping the population in the dark..."

oOoOoOo

Getting to the statue's hand, it turns out, doesn't involve climbing at all, but teleportation.

Standing in the middle of the boy's otherwise quite ordinary looking house is a giant blue crystal platform. When Steven stands on it, he can teleport to any other platform on the entire planet. He demonstrates for Mabel, and it's absolutely wonderful; she's floating in a magical beam of light, hair and towel-cape rising up around her. When the light disappears and she crashes back to the ground, she's now on the top of the hand, staring out across the sea. If she looks down the beach she can see where she left her clothes, and the pizza place she and Dipper had lunch.

"It's just where we keep the laundry machines, but sometimes I like to have lunch up here," Steven says.

It's wonderful and magical, and of course Mabel has to ask more about it. So Steven explains that it belongs to his family, and he can use them because he's half-magic, on his mother's side. And then he shows her this giant pink gemstone he has in his belly button, and she nearly dies of delight, because it's so pretty. And he laughs, and shows her how he can make a shield appear, but how that's nothing compared to what the other Crystal Gems can do, and Mabel finds herself so enraptured in stories about this magical alien warriors that she even manages to forget how high up she is.

"So, what about you?" Steven eventually asks.

So Mabel explains how she has a twin brother called Dipper, and how usually they live in California, but that their parents had sent them off to stay with their Grunkle Stan in Gravity Falls for the summer, which she'd been pretty excited for even though it sounded like it might be boring, and how it ended up being the coolest summer of her life, and how she'd met a bunch of new friends and gotten a new pet pig named Waddles and fought monsters! And then somehow among all the explanation, she let's it slip that she's actually from a different dimension, even though she's promised to keep that a secret.

Steven doesn't care though. He just thinks the information is neat, but isn't shocked by it or anything. "I've never met anybody from another universe before! What's it like?"

She shrugs. "I dunno. It seems pretty similar. I don't think we have any Gems there, though. Are there a lot here?"

"Er...no, not really. I mean, I guess they are, but mostly they all live in space. And I'm the only half-human one."

He seems to fold up a little as he talks about it, and Mabel can tell he isn't comfortable with that area of conversation. So she grins, and says, "Well, let's find out if there's anything else that's different!"

Turns out that there's a lot. They look up some maps, and while they look pretty similar to the ones in her world, a bunch of places are named differently, and here California is an island, and there's a big chunk missing from Africa. There are a whole bunch of different books and shows and stuff, too. Steven gives her some old comic books and novels, because he's finished with them, and this way she can take them home and share them with everybody in her own universe. And she gets to see all his toys and action figures and try candy they've never even invented in her own world, and then she thinks of the most amazing idea ever:

Music.

"Because they've been playing, like, the same twenty songs on repeat allllllll summer long! My friend Wendy can't stand it. I don't mind it too much, but I'd love to hear something other than 'Are We Blanchin?', you know?"

"That's a great idea!" says Steven, pulling out his phone and scrolling through his music collection. "Oooh, oooh, this is one of my favourites!"

Mabel grins as the song starts. It's chirpy and light and fun, impossible to resist. She starts to shake to the beat, and Steven's only a step behind her, getting his jam on.

"Dance party!" she shouts

OooOoOo

After about an hour, Dipper begins to have his...doubts about Ronaldo.

He tries to be patient, open minded, he really does. He knows what it's like to be considered a crack-pot, to have ideas dismissed out-of-hand for being ludicrous. But he can't help but see cracks in the teenager's dissertations. His evidence is often circumstantial at best. His diagrams lack the methodical detail of the ones made by the Author of the Journal. There are jumps in his logic which are practically leaps of faith. When Dipper starts to press in, ask for information or more details, the guy will often just stutter, wave his hands, mutter things like, "Well, more research will have to be done!" and move onto the next point as quickly as possible.

And while Dipper isn't exactly going to claim that vast mind-controlling cults can't exist, not after discovering the whole Blind Eye thing, Ronaldo's claims about drugs being spread through ocean water to keep the population pacified sound more like your run-of-the-mill conspiracy than something which can actually be proved.

But the guy's so genuine and enthusiastic that Dipper doesn't want to let him down. At the same time, neither does he want to waste his entire time in this parallel universe stuck in a lighthouse, listening to him ramble.

"So...you think the drug is distributed by fishing boats?" Dipper asks, thinking fast on his feet. "Any chance I could go take a look?"

"Sure, but be warned- the operation is very cleverly concealed. You probably won't be able to notice that anything is amiss. But," Ronaldo says, grabbing a modified tool-kit with a sign reading 'Portable Laboratory- Hazardous Materials- BEWARE!', "This will give me a chance to take some more water samples, so I'm down. To the docks!"

Kit in hand, Ronaldo heads winding stairwell, waving Dipper along, and just like that, he can feel freedom beckoning. Now it's just a question of whether to stick to the guy or finding an excuse to break away, and spend the rest of his time here just hanging. (Dipper's tending to the latter option. It seems that mystical inter-dimensional portals aside, Beach City really is just an ordinary sea-side town after all).

They've reached the bottom of the hill and have begun walking along the board-walk when a monstrous roar tears through the air.

"Woah, what was that?" Dipper asks, startled.

"Probably another monster attack," Ronaldo says, fishing into his pocket for his phone.

"Wait, what?" Dipper asks. Ronaldo breaks into a run in the direction of the roar, the younger boy following in his wake.

"Oh, yeah. Those happen all the time around here. I usually miss them, though. This could be a great opportunity to get some footage for my blog!"

Dipper's just starting to suspect that this is just another one of the dude's weird conspiracies, but then they round the bend, and standing on the beach in front of them is a freakin' dragon, clawing it's way out of the ocean. It's about the size of a lion, with a body longer and more serpentine than the traditional dragon-image, with deep blue scales, vibrant green eyes, and what appears to be a glittering blue-gemstone embedded in it's neck. When it roars, it breathes a giant jet of water into the sky.

"Come on, let's get a closer look," Ronaldo says, dropping the portable laboratory, and instead grabbing Dipper. Dippper tugs his arm out of the grip before the teenager can pull him along; Dipper likes a monster as much as the next guy, but even he knows not to go running straight at trouble. A second later, Ronaldo gets got in a water blast, and is thrown backwards, landing on the board-walk with a sickening thud. The guy comes out on all fours, half-moaning, half-choking.

And then the dragon turns its attention on Dipper.

It comes bounding towards him, slobbering, huge teeth bared, and all Dipper can do is back away, looking nervously over his shoulder for something to defend himself with. There's nothing.

"GET AWAY FROM HIM!"

The voice slices through the air like a knife, and just as the creature is about to bear down upon him, the speaker jumps in front of him. There's a brilliant pink glow, and a shield appears on their arm.

...or one of them, at least. They have four.

The warrior uses the shield to bash the creature straight on the muzzle. It roars with pain. "Serves you right, you big meany!"

Dipper scrambles to his feet, staring at his saviour. They're a teenager, it seems, of indeterminate gender, wearing short-jeans and a tiny red t-shirt on top of a sparkly-pink bathing suit, a beach towel wrapped around their neck like a cape. Their hair is shoulder length and deep brown, pinned back by a star clip, fluttering dramatically in the wind. They're barefoot, but apparently impervious to hot sand, because they run over it like it's nothing, jumping and leaping as they lead the monster away from Dipper and the rest of the board walk.

They leap onto the monster's back, wrapping one set of arms around it's neck, squeezing tight, while punching and flailing away with the other two. "I wish I'd grabbed a sword before I left the Temple!" they shout, as the dragon rears onto it's hind legs. "Or even my grappling hook!WOAH!"

The dragon twists it's neck, and now shoots water directly at it's attacker with the force of a high-pressure fire-hose. They try to hold on, but even with four hands, they eventually lose their grip and go flying.

Dipper shakes his head, trying to get a grip on things. He doesn't know who- or what- his rescuer is, but they were his rescuer, and that meant he should help. But how? A sword is traditional, but he's kinda short on sharp sticks of metal, so...

The thought hits him like a bolt of lightning. Ronaldo's chemistry kit.

He rushes over to where Ronaldo dropped it, before he'd rushed off to try and get a video. Upon unlatching it, Dipper's pretty disappointed by it's contents. For all the guy's claims that he was going to use it to run chemical analyses on the ocean's water, there's nothing in there which could actually be used for such a task. Dipper had been hoping for some caesium, or even potassium, any reactive metal or chemical, but it seems he's out of luck. This stuff in here is basically things you could find around any home- detergent, salt, baking soda, alcohol, vinegar...

An idea occurs to him. Dipper sizes the box of baking soda and tucks the flimsy water-bottle filled with vinegar under his arm. He turns back to the fight. For a second, he can't even see mysterious warrior; the deluge of water being shot at them is just that strong and thick. If he strains his eyes, however, he can just make them out, shield raised above their head, pushing back against the brunt force of the powerful jet.

"Hey, ugly!" he shouts. "How about you come after me! Tasty twelve-year-old right here! No shield or anything!"

The creature takes the bait, turning it's attention from the surprisingly strong and well-equipped four-armed opponent, to the much smaller and easier prey. Dipper forces himself to hold his ground as it advances. Behind him, the fighter's shield has turned into a pink sphere, encasing them like a giant hamster ball. The person inside it is charging, running straight back into the fray- if Dipper times it just right, the impact will give him time to escape-

-the dragon's open mouth looms, ready to chow down, and Dipper sees his chance. He tosses the vinegar and baking soda into it's gaping maw, then immediately dodges to the side. The dragon chomps down on the open air where he used to be, and face-plants into the wooden boards. It pulls up, it's green eyes now filled with fury, but before it can strike again, it's rammed in the back by an angry hamster ball of pain. Dipper takes it's distraction as an opportunity as a chance to run even farther away. (He's glad to see that Ronaldo's decided to do the same thing, and in the opposite direction).

For a moment, there's a look of conflict on the dragon's face, as it tries to decide which person to attack Then that expression turns into one of puzzlement; then of discomfort, as it's mouth and long throat start to bulge. That's when the baking-soda-and-vinegar explosion does it's work, and it blows up.

Dipper had been preparing himself for a rain of dragon-guts, but after the throat erupts, the body seems to just disappear in a small puff of sparkles, nothing left but the spray of foam and gemstone from it's neck. At this point, Dipper's not going to question it.

(That's a lie. He's totally going to question it).

First, though, he's got about a dozen other, more pressing questions, mostly focused on where the giant dragon came from in the first place, and about the mysterious four-armed warrior who rescued them. Said warrior, he realizes, is now looking right at him. Both their bubble and shield have vanished now, and they're looking quite pleased by the monster's defeat. "Nice one," they tell him.

"Uh. Thanks," he says, then opens his mouth as he tries to work out how to phrase his next question. He's cut off by them giggling.

"Don't recognize me, bro-bro?"

Dipper stares at the strange person. Before, he'd been distracted by the weirdness of it all, but now his eyes are suddenly catching on familiar features. Rosy pink cheeks, star-shaped hair-clip, the Pine family hair-tuft, just like his own. "Mabel?"

"Not exactly," the person winks. They bend down, inspecting the ground where the monster had been standing before it had disintegrated. With nothing else to do, Dipper jogs up to join them. He sees them pick up the remaining gemstone, a shiny orb of glittering blue. They let out a pleased squeak as they admire it, holding it up to the sunlight; then a pink bubble appears from their open palm, surrounding it. Bubble and gem both vanish with a pop. Dipper squirrels this information away, and adds it to the long list of questions he wants to ask.

"Okay," he finally demands, once the person finished. "Who are you, exactly?"

"You can call me Maven," they say, with a grin. Then they look thoughtful, tapping their chin with one of their four hands, resting two of the others on their hips. "Or maybe Stabel. We haven't really decided. That last one might be too much like 'stable', as in the thing horses sleep in, but then horses are super cool, sooo..."

Dipper stares. In his brain, synapses fire rapidly, making a complicated series of connections. Finally, he says, "Wait. Are you saying that you're Mabel...but that you're also somebody else? Or something?"

"Yes!"

They grin, and then a pink light seems radiates from their belly through the bathing suit, and then their entire body dissolves into light, and a moment later there's two kids his own age lying on the ground in front of him. One of them is his sister, who's grinning what's possibly the _widest_ grin he's ever seen on her face. (And that includes the time they went to the theme park for her birthday, and she gorged herself on cotton candy before riding the wildest roller-coaster in the park fifteen times straight). The other kid's a boy, wearing jeans and a T-shirt and a much more normal smile. His t-shirt and pants are the same as the four-armed warrior, Dipper notices.

"Hey!" he says, getting to his feet. "I'm Steven. Nice to meet you."

Dipper blinks between him, and between Mabel. He decides to give his sister a hand up. "Uh, nice to meet you, too. I guess. But I'm seriously going to need an explanation. Like, immediately."

Mabel slings an arm over his shoulder. "Oh, Dipper, Dipper. We'll give it to you. But long story short, you really should have came to the beach with me."

oOoOoOo

 **Disclaimer:** I cannot guarantee that the baking-soda-and-vinegar reaction will produce an explosion strong enough to defeat a dragon. Do not attempt at home.


	4. Sister Shows

**Author's Note:** So I got a couple questions for this, so I just wanted to clarify...these one-shots aren't connected (unless specified otherwise). They're not in continuity or anything, so the 'rules' of each individual crossover can vary.

Secondly- this is going to be the last chapter posted before the new episodes, which as of the time of this writing, are airing in a matter of hours. Very exciting! That said, I'm still going to be updating this fic, since I've still got ideas for one-shots. Updates might not be as regular, but they will be happening. Never fear :)

oOoOoOo

 **Summary:** In the hiatus void, things get pretty meta.

oOoOoOo

 **Sister Shows**

Out behind the Mystery Shack there is an apparently bottomless pit. Some have claimed that such a thing is impossible. There must be a bottom to it, even if that bottom reaches the burning magma beneath the Earth's crust. That's just how the world works.

This would be true, if the bottomless pit was merely a hole in the ground. But it's not.

It's a hole in the fourth wall.

Holes like it used to be pretty common in cartoons. In fact, there have been shows which lacked fourth walls entirely, but they've become rarer and rarer in recent years. In Gravity Falls the wall was usually pretty solid, but with all the reality distortions in the area, there had been a lot of wear on the veils between dimensions. It's not particularly surprising that tears managed to form. The pit was just one of these tears. It sat in broad daylight, and people even manage to fall into it from time to time, though thankfully, they always made it back. Eventually.

Because, sooner or later, everybody does end up in the pit's void, although rarely by choice. Those periods of forced exile have a name: hiatus.

Being pulled into the hiatus void for the first time is always a shock, for basically everyone. It's hard, confronting the sudden realization that you're fictional. It prompts a lot of existential angst and rage against the writers. And since everyone always forgets this fact once the plot actually resumes, each subsequent hiatus can be just as sobering. But eventually, the constant interruptions lose their sting. By the time of their latest journey into the void, the cast of Gravity Falls had only one reaction- frustration.

"Seriously?" Mabel shouted upon finding herself instantly transported from the wreckage of Stan's secret basement to the endless blackness of the pit. "Again?!"

"Oh, come on! We can't end there!" muttered Dipper. His heart was still pounding, blood racing with adrenaline; that last scene had been so intense. He spun in the air to face his Grunkle (if that was who he even was). "You gotta give us more than that. Please."

"Nope," Stan said. The other Stan, who'd traveled with them this time, nodded in agreement with his twin.

"But that was some pretty heavy stuff," said Soos. "Backstory! Mystery! Motivation! Long lost twin brothers! You can't just leave us hanging. "

This earned nods all around, and Mabel began to chant, "STORY! STORY! STORY!"

'Their' Stan crossed his arms. "Nuh-huh. Sorry, but you kids will have to wait for the next episode, just like everyone else."

The Author nodded once more, apparently determined to remain silent until the proper time came.

There was no point arguing. Every previous hiatus had been spent desperately trying to convince other characters to share information about the story-line, but they were notoriously tight-lipped. Trying again would just be a waste of breath. So instead Dipper crossed his arms, and flopped forward in a way which would have been much more satisfyingly dramatic if there had actually been a floor to flop onto. "This sucks."

It did, and not just because of the unresolved tension- but because of the boredom. There was very, very little to do when you're falling through an endless void of blackness. The Gravity Falls cast did what they could. They told elaborate stories. The theorized about the future of their own plot. They performed increasingly complicated aerial acrobatics. They sung. A lot. (And very rarely on key).

Mabel was about a quarter of the way through, "Nine Thousand, Nine Hundred and Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall" when there was a slight pop, and another handful of people appeared in the void. Mabel's singing broke-off mid not as she shrieked with joy.

"Oh thank God," muttered Grunkle Stan, removing his fingers from his ears.

There was a collection of groans, sighs and sheepish hellos as the mixture of Gems and humans of the Steven Universe cast took everything in. The void veterans all floated over to say hello- even Wendy, who'd retreated to her own corner of the void some while back to get in some obligatory teenage moping.

"So, finally decided to join us?" she said, half-playful, half-genuinely annoyed.

"There was no choice involved," said Garnet, crossing her arms.

"Yeah, if there were, we sure wouldn't have returned to this snooze fest," Amethyst grumbled.

"Wow, been here less than a minute, and you're already complaining," muttered Stan. While he was glad for the distraction provided by newcomers, he wasn't particularly fond of any of the Steven Universe cast, and he certainly wasn't fond of their far more constant airing schedule. (Not that he was jealous, of course. He just felt that as the younger show, they should really know their place).

"Oh, lay off Stan," said Soos, nudging the man in what he hoped was a playful, son-like way. Stan just grumbled as the handy-man propelled himself towards the new 'guests', receiving a playful punch as greeting from Greg Universe.

The kids all naturally drifted towards each other- but it wasn't as bright a reunion as they might have hoped. "Er, you okay, Steven?" Mabel asked. Aside from the pink pony that occasionally dropped in, he was one of the few people who could match her for sheer cheerfulness, but he seemed uncharacteristically down. "You seem a little...bummed."

"I'm fine," Steven said, forcing a smile.

The twins exchanged looks; Connie slung a reassuring arm over her friend's shoulder. "We just had a pretty intense string of episodes," she explained to the others.

"Oh," said Dipper. "Um, what happened?"

"We found a bunch of super scary war experiments, and my friend is trapped at the bottom of the ocean as her mind fuses with someone she hates."

"Ah."

"But...er, I learned to sword fight!" said Connie, reaching for a way to inject some cheer into the conversation.

"Wow! Awesome!" said Mabel, holding up her hand for a high-five. After a moment of hesitation, Connie gave her one.

Wendy seemed pretty psyched by this bit of plot-advancement. "Woah, really? Cool. Could you show us?"

The girl blushed at all the sudden attention. "Well...I mean, I've only really used it against holograms so far."

"Holograms? Okay, that just sounds legitimately awesome," said Dipper.

Connie still wasn't eager to demonstrate her new skills for an audience- especially since she had no idea how to perform the majority of her sets while in complete free-fall. She was thankfully saved by Pearl calling out, "No sword-fighting in the void!" There were disappointed grumbles all around, but the relieved Connie simply explained that she couldn't disobey her teacher, and the topic was eventually dropped.

Even without sword-fighting demonstrations, the introduction of an entire new cast of characters was still enough to liven things up- especially when a good portion of it was made of ancient, magical alien warriors. The Crystal Gems weren't always the best conversationalists, but they made up for it by telling long, action-packed stories, and the ability to entertain everyone with shape-shifting. Amethyst could turn into a ball, and everyone could play catch with her, and there was not chance of her getting thrown too far away and subsequently lost in the void, because she could just turn into a bird and fly back to the group. They made wild theories about Sardonyx being a fusion of the centipeedle and Jasper, or L'il Gideon actually being a werewolf. When the theorizing made their brains feel like mush, they could settle back and watch Lion wrestle with Waddles, the two turning into an adorable bright pink ball tumbling through the darkness. Eventually they settled onto their old fall-back of singing, but this time there was ukulele accompaniment and practically professional vocals.

But overtime, even that lost it's appeal, and everyone drifted off into a quiet, melancholy silence. They'd run out of things to talk about.

Almost.

"I miss the Mystery Shack," Mabel said, suddenly. At some point she'd curled up into a tight ball. "I miss my own bed, and the forest, and my glitter pens. I even miss that weird mold at the back of the fridge that nobody wants to clean up. I want to go back."

Everybody looked at her, concerned, sympathetic frowns on their faces- but they didn't know how to comfort her. They were all feeling the same.

"I miss home, too," Steven said at last. His father, floating above him, patted him on the head.

Wendy shot them a tight smile. She wasn't good at all this comforting stuff, but she wanted to try. "Don't worry. We'll get back, eventually."

"Maybe we won't," said Amethyst, with a false-casualness. "Not everybody does, you know."

"Amethyst," Pearl hissed.

"It's true, though." There was a wicked edge to the purple alien's grin. "A lot of shows get cancelled, just like that," she snapped her fingers. "Not enough toy sales, or ratings are too low, or the wrong demographic is watching it. They get stuck here forever. Plot threads left dangling, no plot resolution. Some say, that if you listen closely, you can still hear the screams of those who were trapped here forever."

A hushed silence fell over the collected group. As they sped through the infinite void, ears strained over the rushing of the wind, terrified that they very might hear the distant screams of the lost souls of Motorcity or Young Justice.

"Enough," Garnet finally said. She first gave Amethyst a long, heavy look, then turned a softer gaze to the rest of her companions. "We are not going to be cancelled. We are not going to be stuck here."

"Yeah," said Soos. "Our networks love us!"

Stan grumbled darkly. "They don't show it."

"Television Executives just operate on a different logic than everyone else," Connie explained knowingly. Even if her life wasn't technically real, the young fangirl still had memories of many beloved cult TV shows such as 'College' and 'Waterfall' being treated terribly by their respective networks. She knew things hadn't gotten nearly as bad as it could.

"And we've got a return date!" said Steven, brightly. "July 13th!"

(During hiatus, information like air-dates and episode names would just sometimes pop into everyone's heads. Nobody knew how or why, but it was a little unsettling).

"Whenever that is," Pearl grumbled. She didn't particularly understand human calendar systems at the best of times, at it was even harder when you were stuck in a place without days, night, stars, and where all watches stopped working. July 13th could be an eternity away.

Pearl stiffened. Mabel, every the sympathetic soul, had came over to give the alien knight a reassuring cuddle. She wasn't quite sure how to respond to the sudden physical contact. "Don't you worry! We'll be back eventually!"

"Yeah, eventually," Amethyst groaned. She flopped forward onto her belly; then her eyes widened as she looked down. "Oh!"

"What? What is it?" asked Pearl, then she shrieked when she saw.

Soon everybody was looking down, shouting with excitement; because in the dark void on the hiatus, finally, there was a single circle of pure white light. It was tiny and distant and first, but it was growing larger and larger by the second.

"Always a light at the end of the tunnel!" Mabel announced gleefully.

"Oh, it's coming up very quickly," said Pearl, her excitement becoming edged with concern. She pushed away from Mabel, and went to twine an arm around one of Garnet's. "What do you think is going happen?"

The fusion shrugged. "Dunno."

"Plot," said Dipper. "Lots of it! I mean...we're finally going to get answers to all these questions!"

"Plot doesn't mean 'fun'. And you might not like the answers to those questions, kid," Stan remarked.

There was another silence, as everybody remembered the things they'd gone through for the sake of the plot. Remembered demonic triangles pulling teeth out of deer mouths, a menacing green ship in the sky, terrified screams echoing through the night air, a wild-eyed fusion being dragged beneath the waves, and so many tears.

Maybe the hiatus wasn't so bad, after all.

"Well," Steven said as the light grew ever brighter. A small, brave smile appeared on his face. He tentatively reached out for Connie's hand. "Whatever happens, at least we'll go through it together."

Connie returned his smile, and with her other free hand, reached out for her teacher's. Pearl took it, and grabbed Garnet's more firmly. In turn the fusion took Amethyst's hand, who then grabbed Greg's. Mabel decided to follow their lead, and grabbed out for her brother. Soon all of the Gravity's Falls main cast were linked in a circle, the two Stans holding each other's hands for the first time in years.

The light was almost blinding now. The two casts looked at each other awkwardly.

"Well," Garnet said, something of a smile appearing on her face. "Show time."

Dipper nodded at Steven, one lead to another. "See you on the flip side."

Steven smiled, and nodded back.

The characters fell through the light, and the bomb finally hit.


	5. Apprenticeship Opportunities

**Author's Note:** And we're back! Another one-shot, as promised.

This one is a sequel to Chapter 2, 'A Professional Interest', but don't worry if you haven't read it or forgot- it's pretty self-explanatory. Hope you enjoy! :)

oOoOoOo

 **Apprenticeship Opportunities**

Steven is asleep- and then, quite suddenly, he is not.

He finds himself sitting straight-up in his bed, eyes wide in the darkness. He's not sure why he woke up. He can remember that he was dreaming, but not what about; the images are fading fast in the ways that dream often do. He's pretty sure that it wasn't a scary dream, though. Around him everything is quiet and still- there's no late night monster attack, or Amethyst making a midnight snack run, or any of the other things that sometimes wakes him up. He doesn't need to go to the toilet, either. It's as if he was just...suddenly thrown into wakefulness.

The boy looks slowly around the room. "Anyone there?" he calls out, just in case. "Lion? Pearl?"

There's no answer.

Something about this doesn't... feel right. Steven's not sure how to describe it. There's something subtly- unsettling, about it all. An sense of unreality to this familiar setting. He's beginning to wonder if he's really awake after all.

"...Lapis?" he asks, his hands pulling the duvet up to his chest.

"NOPE."

The voice doesn't belong to Lapis, or even to the monstrous Malachite. It doesn't sound like any voice Steven's ever heard before in his life. It's sounds as if a synthesizer could talk. It seems to go directly into his brain.

Actually, that's what it must be doing, because the speaker doesn't actually have a mouth.

Said speaker is a triangle. That's really the only way Steven can describe it. A yellow triangle covered in regular lines, to give the impression that it's built out of a bricks like a pyramid, despite the fact it otherwise appears completely flat. It doesn't have a mouth, but it does have two arms, and legs, a matching bow-tie and black top-hat, and a single, staring eye in the center of it's- er, it's face, for lack of a better word.

It just- appeared , in his room. Because Steven had looked all around, and he definitely hadn't seen a giant triangle just floating in front of him.

But now he can't shake the eerie impression that maybe it had been there the whole time, and for some reason, he simply hadn't noticed.

"Uh. Hi," Steven says.

The triangle smiles, without actually having a mouth to smile with. "HEYA. NICE TO MEET YA, KID."

"Er, nice to meet you too. But- um, if you don't mind me asking," Steven pauses, trying to work out which question he wants to ask first, and sides on the most 'normal' one. He's not sure if his others could be considered polite. "-who are you?"

"OH, HOW RUDE OF ME. NAME'S BILL CIPHER. YOU CAN CALL ME BILL. AND YOU'RE STEVEN UNIVERSE, RIGHT?"

The boy nods.

The triangle floats towards him, and wiggles a finger in his direction. "BUT YOU SEE," he says, in his strange, electronic voice. "WHAT YOU REALLY SHOULD BE ASKING IS ' WHAT ARE YOU?'"

"Oh," says Steven. It wasn't as though he hadn't been wondering. He'd never seen a talking triangle wearing a top-hat before. It had just seemed a little... rude. "So...what are you?"

"SIMPLE. I'M A DREAM DEMON."

"A- demon?" he asks, alarm ringing in his voice.

"JUST A TITLE," Bill says, with a dismissive wave of a hand. "DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING. OR, WELL, THE DREAM PART DOES.

"AND THAT'S WHAT THE TWO OF US ARE. DREAM DEMONS."

Steven frowns. "Uh...well, you might be. But I'm not. I'm a Gem. Or half-Gem, half-human."

"WELL, SURE YOU ARE. BUT YOU'RE ALSO A DREAM DEMON."

Steven still looks sceptical. "Are you sure? I mean, we don't look anything alike."

"PFFT, APPEARANCES ARE MEANINGLESS. TO BE A DREAM DEMON, ALL YOU NEED IS THE POWERS. AND YOU HAVE BEEN ABLE TO DREAM-WALK, RIGHT?"

"Well- yeah," and suddenly, Steven looks up at Bill, eyes wide. "You mean you know about that?"

"'COURSE, KID. I KNOW ABOUT LOTS OF THINGS."

"So- do you know what I did? And how?" he asks. "Because- I'm not sure what happened! I just went to sleep thinking about Lapis Lazuli, and the next thing I knew- I was in her head! Or Malachite's head. Oh, wait, maybe you don't know what fusions are-"

Bill holds up a hand. "I KNOW."

"Okay, good. So I was in Malachite's head. And we were sharing each others' dreams, and I could feel how scared she was, and how angry Jasper was. And then she was able to become Malachite, and was like- was able to **push** me out. I've been trying to get back in, so I can try and talk to her, but no matter what, I can't."

"THAT'S TYPICAL. MOST PEOPLE KEEP THEIR MINDS TO THEMSELVES MOST OF THE TIME. BUT WHEN YOUR FRIEND LET SOMEONE ELSE IN THERE, SHE HADN'T CLOSED THE DOOR BEHIND HER. AFTER YOU BROKE IN, SHE SLAMMED IT SHUT, AND PUT A LOCK ON IT. IT WILL TAKE A LOT MORE POWER THAN YOU HAVE TO BREAK THAT DOWN THE DOOR AND GET BACK IN."

"...that sounds painful," says Steven. "I wouldn't want to hurt her. Or even Jasper, unless I have to."

"DON'T WORRY. YOU'RE NOT STRONG ENOUGH TO THAT KIND OF THING YET," Bill tells him. "BUT WITH SOME TRAINING, YOU MIGHT BE ABLE TO USE PICK THE DOOR'S LOCK, INSTEAD."

The boy looks thoughtful. "I think I see what you mean," he says, then sighs. "I wouldn't even know how to start learning, though... None of the Gems can help, they have no idea how my powers work."

"YEESH, THOSE GUYS?" says Bill, rolling his eye. "THEY DON'T KNOW THE FIRST THING ABOUT DREAMING, NOT EVEN THE PURPLE ONE. THE COULDN'T HELP YOU EVEN IF THEY WANTED."

Steven's eyes narrow. "What do you mean by that?"

Bill shrugs. "GEMS ARE SECRATIVE. IT'S IN THEIR NATURE. IT'S HOW THEY HOLD ONTO POWER."

"Hey, the Gems aren't like that!"

The triangle raised a single eyebrow. "YOU'RE SAYING THEY DON'T KEEP SECRETS?"

"Well... no," said Steven. He knew they kept secrets; tons of them, even now. "But they only do that because they love me, and they want to protect me! Not because they- they want power, or anything!

"And besides," he continues. "They want to find Lapis, just like I do! They want me to get a handle on my dream powers, if it could help us!"

As he spoke, the boy's voice became louder and louder, more and more defensive. Bill Cipher threw up his hands. "WOAH, WOAH. WHATEVER YOU SAY, KID. BUT **I'M** JUST SAYING, THEY CAN'T TEACH YOU TO DREAM WALK."

"Yeah... Okay." Steven's head drooped. He stared down at the blanket pulled over his lap. The Crystal Gems... they could never help him with his powers. Not really. Not even the ones they understood from his mom, like his shield or his plants or his healing. They could only protect him when those powers went wrong, and hope that he figured out the rest on his own.

It would be nice- really nice- to have somebody how even just one of his powers worked. Someone who could get rid of all the confusion, like when Dad had taught him to play the ukelele. It had never mattered if he couldn't get a chord right, because Dad had always been there to help guide his fingers into the right place.

Suddenly, a thought struck him. He looked up, tiny stars glittering in his eyes. "Wait a sec!" he said. "You're a- a dream demon, right? Like me? Couldn't you teach me?!"

Bill's eye widened, as though the thought had never occurred to him. "WOAH. Y'KNOW, I PROBABLY COULD."

The little boy beamed, scrambling to his feet. "Great!"

"BUT," said Bill, cutting Steven off before he could get too excited. "I HAVE TO WONDER. WHAT'S IN IT FOR ME?"

"Uh." Steven blinked. "The satisfaction to a job-well-done?"

"TEMPTING," Bill said. "BUT NOT ENOUGH. I'M A REAL BUSY GUY, AND IF YOU'RE GOING TO GET ANYWHERE IN THIS MULTI-VERSE KID, YOU GOTTA REALIZE THAT IT'S TIT FOR TAT. I'LL SCRATCH YOUR BACK IF YOU SCRATCH MINE."

That seemed... fair, Steven supposed. "What kind of thing did you have in mind?" he asked.

"WELL."

It felt as if the world subtly shifted; like all the blood rushed to Steven's brain. Around him, all the colours reverse; light into dark, dark into light, casting a truly eerie, supernatural light to everything. Outside, the night sky became a pale white void, scattered with stars glittering black. The only things unaffected was Bill's steady yellow glow, and Steven's own form, which only now did he realize was surrounded by a pale pink light.

"IT WOULDN'T BE ANYTHING MUCH," said Bill. "IF YOU BECAME MY APPRENTICE, I'D JUST HAVE YOU HELP ME OUT ON SOME OF MY BUSINESS. THINK OF THEM AS FIELD TRIPS. A CHANCE TO GET SOME... PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE. YOU MIGHT EVEN GET TO MEET SOME NEW FRIENDS.

"SEE, THERE ARE SOME OTHER KIDS I KNOW, IN ANOTHER DIMENSION. REALY FUN, REAL CLEVER, YOU'D LIKE THEM. BUT THEY'RE INTERESTED IN SOME DANGEROUS STUFF, AND GETTING IN WAAAAAAY OVER THEIR HEADS. I'VE TRIED TO WARN THEM OFF, BUT YOU KNOW HOW KIDS CAN BE. NEVER WANT TO LISTEN TO THEIR ELDERS.

"BUT PINE TREE AND SHOOTING STAR MIGHT LISTEN TO YOU. YOU'RE ON THEIR LEVEL, YOU KNOW?"

Steven doesn't really know, actually. In his experience, people older than him were usually pretty smart, and tended to know what they were doing.

But at the same time, they could be frustrating, and annoying, and so sure of themselves. Sometimes- not often, but sometimes- Steven had gone against what the Gems or his Dad had told him, just to prove them wrong. It- hadn't always worked out for him. He'd only gotten through it because he had folks looking out for them.

And... maybe these kids (Pine Tree and Shooting Star, apparently- and weren't those kinda weird names?) don't have anyone to look out for them. If he can help them, keep them out of danger, then he should try, right?

Something stops him from agreeing right away, though. He looks at Bill Cipher's strange form. It's unlike anything he's ever seen- and he's seen a lot. Should he just...agree, without knowing what he's getting into? Shouldn't he talk to someone about it, first?

(He briefly contemplates calling out for Garnet, and Amethyst, and Pearl, but he doesn't. He knows, somewhere deep inside, that right now, they won't be able to hear him.)

Bill holds out a hand. It burns with blue fire, casting even stranger shadows across the room.

"SO KID," he says. "WHAT D'YA SAY?"

Bill's nice, Steven thinks. He's offering to help.

But still, something stays Steven's own hand. The boy just says, "Er..."

Bill's eye widens. For a moment, Steven thinks it's because he's annoyed-but no- the triangle seems to be staring at something else, far beyond this place, something Steven cannot see. Images flicker through the demon's body, too fast for Steven to catch most of them. He's just barely able to make out brief glimpses of something coherent; darkened forests, a mansion's ballroom, a rolling dice, a swirling fluttering rainbow, a snow-globe full of stars...

The images suddenly vanish. Steven blinks rapidly. He feels as if he can still feel those images dancing, even behind his eyelids.

The dream demon's hands have curled into fists. His body returns to a relatively solid yellow, his single eye refocusing. He seems- annoyed, almost. But not quite. Perhaps more like he's... lost-in-thought.

"LOOK- I HATE TO RUN, BUT SOMETHING'S COME UP," Bill says, eventually turning his attention back to Steven. "HOW ABOUT THIS? I'LL GIVE YOU SOME TIME TO THINK MY OFFER OVER. TRAINING LIKE MINE'S A ONCE IN AN ETERNITY KIND OF CHANCE, SO I SUGGEST YOU TAKE IT. JUST CALL, AND I'LL BE THERE."

"Uhhh..." Steven begins.

"CATCH YOU LATER," the demon says with a wink, and then everything vanishes.

Steven awakes with a gasp. He's lying on his back, in his bed. His face is flushed with sweat. He sits up quickly, glancing around. Everything looks normal. The room's completely empty, aside from him. It's almost morning, the pale light of dawn sneaking over the horizon in the distance. There's no triangle person to be found.

It was just a dream, Steven thinks, more to convince himself than anything else.

Maybe it was just a dream, something that only happened in his head. But Steven understands very well that this doesn't mean it wasn't real.

Bill Cipher, he says in his head, being very careful not to say it out loud. Not yet, at least.


	6. With a Little Help

**With a Little Help**

There's something steadying about practicing sword sets.

That statement sounds like it should be wrong. People don't hear the word 'sword' and think 'relaxing'. Especially not if the sword in question was the one Connie is wielding now- nearly half her size, forged from a mineral that's not of this world, a relic from an ancient intergalactic war. It's not something to be put on displayed and admired: it is a true weapon.

But nonetheless, it is comforting, Connie thinks. There's something meditative about carrying the sword through the series of familiar movements. She can get lost in the endless repetition of high strokes and low strokes, parries and thrusts and blocks. With no opponent or partner to stand against, it's just her and the sword.

And besides. When you wield the blade of Rose Quartz in your hand, you feel like nothing can stop you. Nothing, not even-

Her thoughts are derailed by the sound of footsteps coming up behind her, accompanied by heavy breathing. Connie doesn't let herself getdistracted, though. Distraction leads to death; Pearl has drilled that into her.

So Connie continues with her sword practice, not slowing down at all. She does incorporate a twirl into her otherwise predictable set; it gives her a chance to see who has come up the hill to join her. With her quick spin she catches a brief glimpse of brown hair, bright red cheeks, and a garish sequinned sweater. Connie has to bite down a groan. It's the last person she wanted to see just now.

She puts a little more force into her next few strikes than strictly necessary.

Connie continues practicing; her guest continues watching. Connie hopes that if she continues long enough, the other girl will get bored, lose interest, and go away. To the sword-fighter's frustration, though, she eventually just sits down, settling into a comfortable position on the grass.

Connie does her best to ignore the inquisitive eyes watching her, throwing herself completely into her practice.

She continues on for as long as she can, hoping to wait the watcher out. But sitting on the grass is lot easier than performing an advanced sword fighting routine. The sun above her is hot, and despite the nearby ocean, the air is still without even a breeze. Connie begins to sweat; it drips into her eyes. Her chest heaves and her lungs begin the desperate fight to provide her muscles with the oxygen they need. Those very sam muscles burn. The sword in her hand grows heavier and heavier in her hand, the continued effort proving to be too much to bear.

Eventually, Connie had to admit to herself that she can't continue. She needs to stop. She makes one last low-block, before thrusting her sword forward and upward, as if pressing it against the neck of an invisible opponent. Then, she finally lets the blade drop to her side, briefly bowing her head.

She takes several long, deep breaths. Then she turns to grab the scabbard lying a few feet away, pointedly not looking at her 'guest' as she does so.

-at least, until Connie sheaths her sword and finally looks up, only to find Mabel Pines standing right in front of her, smiling, and holding a water-bottle out towards her.

Connie just barely manages to jump out of the shock. Mabel's the type of person who announces her presence with sirens, screaming and surprise-glomp-hugs; she had no idea she could be so quiet. Nonetheless, Connie forces herself to stare calmly at the girl.

In fact, Connie seriously considers not saying a thing to Mabel; ignoring her completely, and just walking away. But that would be rude. Toomean. And anyways, she can't keep her eyes of the offered water bottle. She's parched, and she'd been in such a rush before that she hadn't even thought to grab something to drink herself.

So Connie relents, and takes the bottle. She uncorks the top, muttering, "Thanks."

"No problem!" Mabel replies...

Whatever is in the bottle, it isn't water. It's fruity- but **definitely** not fruit juice. Connie would have guessed it to be Gatorade or some other sports drink, but its way, way too sweet for that. Sweet enough that it would probably cause her mother to have a fit and immediately drag her off to the dentist, but at that moment, Connie really doesn't care. It's cold and liquid and that's more than enough for her.

She chugs over half of the bottle at once. She finishes, panting. "What is this?" she gasps.

"Mabel Juice," says Mabel, sounding distinctly proud. "Guaranteed to give anyone the energy they need! Excellent for fighting the bodies of possessed brothers!" Her bright smile fades notch when she sees Connie's not-particularly-enthusiastic response. "Sorry, I didn't have all the ingredients to make it properly."

"It's fine," Connie says. "Thanks."

Connie hands the bottle back, then turns to walk back down the hill, and towards the Temple. Or maybe to go back home. She's not sure.

"Wait!" Mabel shouts after her.

Before Connie can even decide whether or not to respond, the girl is at her side, appearing…worried? "Are you okay?" she asks.

Connie looks away. "Fine."

"Well, it doesn't seem like it," Mabel says, something unyielding in her voice. "You ran away so quickly before, and now you don't even want to talk to me!"

"I just wanted to practice sword-fighting," says Connie, "and now I'm tired. So please. Let me go."

Mabel stares at her. Hard.

Then she frowns. "You don't like me very much."

It's not a question.

Connie feels heat rise in her cheeks. "What? No-"

"It's true," Mabel says, very matter-of-fact, cutting off her protests. "You don't seem to like Dipper that much, either, but you seem to dislikeme a lot more, and I don't know why. You're not stuck-up or anything, and you're really nice to Steven and the Gems and everyone… so why me? Did I do something wrong?"

There's frustration and anger on her face, but also genuine hurt, and Connie feels that guilt rising up in her throat like vomit. But no- she's not the one who's gonna feel guilty here, not when it's Mabel who's-

"Well, tell me," Mabel demands, taking a step closer.

Connie's grip around the scabbard tightens. "It's stupid," she says.

Mabel screws up her face kind of weird and looks at her. "Well, maybe it is," she says. "But I still wanna know."

Connie exhales. She doesn't really want to do this. And anyway, she isn't even sure how to start

"Is…it about the fusion?" Mabel asks, when Connie takes too long to answer.

"I- uh-" stutters Connie.

"Because when I- we- whatever, showed up, you got all weird and then ran away," Connie tells her. "We were worried."

"You just- startled me," Connie says.

"Startled? You?" says Mabel dubiously. "Come on. You're not fazed by anything."

"That's not true!" Connie exclaims, and it really isn't. She's read and seen lots of fantasy, so she's generally been able to take things like crashing space-probes and teleporting magical lions and alien monsters in stride, but sometimes it feels like she's just barely hanging on. And when Stabel or Maven or whatever their fusion's name is had waltzed through the door of Steven's house- well, she had definitely been **fazed**.

(Or, to put it another way: startled and scared and jealous.)

So of course, Connie had escaped at the first possible opportunity and gone off to practice with her sword.

Mabel doesn't say anything else- she's just watching Connie with a concerned look. Connie remembers what she said: We were worried. She feels guilt gnawing away at her stomach.

"How's Steven?" Connie asks. She hopes she didn't upset him, while also recognising that yeah, she probably did.

"Fine," Mabel says. "But he's worried about you. We unfused pretty much as soon as you left; he wanted to come right after you, but I convinced him that I should go instead. He's hanging out with Dipper."

"Oh."

Silence stretches.

"So…what happened?" asks Mabel. "I mean, you can't have, like, freaked out. I know you've seen fusions before. Heck, you've fused with Steven!"

"That's exactly the point!" says Connie, voice coming out louder than intended, and she can't stop herself from saying, "I fused with him first!"

The silence is deafening.

Mabel scowls, her tiny and usually adorable body radiating with anger. "That's ridiculous!" she roars. "You don't have some sort of- of-monopoly on fusing with him! He can do whatever he wants! What would you have said if it had been Garnet, or Pearl, or Amethyst?"

"That's completely different!" Connie yells back, and it is, it absolutely is. Because the Crystal Gems- they're not comparable, they're like Steven's Moms, or his teachers, or teammates- or guardians, there's no risk that-

\- that- that they'll-

And then, to Connie's embarrassment, she realises that she's begun to cry.

She wipes the tears away impatiently, but of course, Mabel's already noticed. And, of course, since Mabel's actually a nice person, her anger's already fading, being replaced with concern. "What's- what's wrong?"

There's no getting out of it. Connie lets herself sit down on the grassy slope, placing the sword besides her. Her vision is still blurry from the tears. She kind of wishes she'd brought her glasses with her, even knowing how useless they are now. Maybe she could get new glasses, reflective ones like Garnet's.

"Steven was my friend first," Connie says, in a small voice.

"You can have more than one friend," Mabel points out.

"I know that," she replies quickly, "It's just- I mean, Steven's the first one I've ever had."

Mabel, frankly, looks amazed. "Really?"

"Yeah, really." Connie wipes away some fresh tears with the back of her hand. "I mean, I guess I had others before, but they never really lasted." The reasons had varied. Sometimes Connie would change schools, and have to leave them behind; or they hadn't been able to keep up with her busy extracurricular schedule; or Mom would find out something about them and decide their family wasn't appropriate for her daughter. Or they would just lose interest. "And I don't really- I don't really understand why Steven even wants to be friends with me. He's all cool and magical, and I'm just some- some boring nerdy Indian girl."

"No you're not!" protests Mabel. "You can sword-fight, and you go on all sorts of awesome magical adventures!"

"Yeah- but, I mean, the only reason I do any of that is because of Steven," says Connie. "Before I met him and the Gems, nothing cool ever happened to me.

"But then there's you. And Dipper," she continues. "You've done all sorts of fantastic things, all by yourselves! You've- you've chased dinosaurs, and fought Dream Demons, and even seen unicorns! Actual real-life unicorns!"

"Unicorns are actually huge jerks," Mabel says quickly. "We beat them up. They bleed rainbows."

"You see? That's my point! You're so awesome! And you fused so easily with him. What if- what if Steven decides he likes you better than me? Decides he doesn't want to hang out?" Connie pulls her knees up to her chest, her eyes burning fiercely. "I wouldn't blame him."

She stares blankly down the hill. A couple of seconds later, she feels Mabel's warm form settle in close besides her. Not quite touching, but almost.

"Steven wouldn't do that," Mabel says. "He likes you. A lot. I was just in his head, so I know. He thinks you're one of the coolest people in the whole universe, and considering who he knows, that's saying a **lot**." Mabel pauses briefly, then says, "I like you a lot, too."

Connie's not sure what to say to that. On one hand, it's a nice thing to know. Really nice, actually. On the other hand, it just makes her feel eve worse about how she's been acting. So for a while they just sit together, on the hill beneath the lighthouse.

Eventually, Mabel says, "You know, I never used to have a lot of friends, either."

Connie looks at the other girl out of the corner of her eye. She has trouble believing that Mabel, with her endless abundance of colourful sweaters and glittery stickers and ridiculous jokes, could ever have trouble making friends. "Really?"

"Yeah," Mabel says with a sigh. "I like people a lot, but sometimes I think they don't always like me much. Dipper says that I come on 'too strong' or whatever and scare them off, but then, he's not exactly a social butterfly, y'know?" She grins. "But no matter what, I've always had Dipper. And he always had me, so we never got lonely.

"And then," continues Mabel, "We went to Gravity Falls."

Ah, yes, Gravity Falls. Connie's heard a lot about that strange and mysterious place since the Pine family moved to Beach City. A place which apparently manages to pack in enough questions and conspiracy theories to rival Twin Peaks, and where secrets lurk around every corner.

"I met Grenda and Candy there," says Mabel. "They're some of the most neatest people I've ever met! They were my people. And there was Wendy, and Soos, and even Pacifica, eventually, and I'd never ever had so many friends like that before, not ever.

"And then the summer ended," says Mabel. "And we had to leave behind the Shack, and our Grunkles, and all our friends. We still write, of course," she says, fairly, "But it's not the same.

"Me and Dipper, we both thought it was going to be so boring. Back to school. Goodbye mysteries. Goodbye adventures. Goodbye friends." She looks at Connie. "But then Mom and Dad said, 'Guess what? We're moving!' So we ended up here, in Beach City. And then we met Steven, and the Gems, and you. And it turned out that things weren't going to be that bad, after all."

"Oh," Connie breathes, softly. Mabel gives her a strange little smile.

"I guess what I'm saying," begins Mabel, "Is that I really do like you. You seem pretty cool. And I want to be your friend. If you'd like."

"…well. Sure." Connie says, amazed that's even something she's being offered. "I'd- like that. And, er. I'm sorry. For before."

Mabel shrugs, good naturedley. "Apology accepted!" Then she extends a hands. "So. Friends?"

After a brief moment of hesitation Connie takes it, and shakes it. "Friends."

Mabel grins broadly at her, and answers with a strong shake of her own before letting go. "And if it helps," the odd girl says, "if I was able to, I'd want to fuse with you, too."

Connie's stomach does a little flip, and she feels yet another blush warming her cheeks, this time for a very different reason. "Uh," she stutters. "Um. Yeah, that would be cool. I guess." She grabs her sword and climbs to her feet as a way to hide her awkwardness. Then she says, "I'd have to warn you, though, I'm not a very good dancer."

"Well, I'm a **great** dancer!" Mabel says, and then she jumps to her feet, eyes wide with excitement. "I know, I know! I could give you dancing lessons! And exchange for showing you my moves, you could teach me yours! You know, with a sword!"

Connie stifles a laugh as she watches Mabel mime a few highly impractical sword slashes at a non-existent enemy. "Well," she says, "Only if you also show me how to use your grappling hook."

Mabel finishes with her fake fencing, and stares at Connie with what the girl thinks is just faux seriousness. "You drive a hard bargain, Miss Maheswaran," Mabel says, then the mask cracks as a smile breaks through, "but **deal**!"

Connie smiles back at her new friend. "Okay," she says. "Then let's head over to the Temple, and go see if Pearl will help you pick out a sword."

And together, the two of them make their way back down the hill.

oOoOoOoOo

 **Author's Note:** For my dear friend LadyRavenEye, who got the idea of something involving Connie and Mabel stuck in my head. (And then I went and added swords and fusion, because of course I did).


End file.
